flower

1. Set up a new file to work on. A4 size landscape will be good.

2. Draw a circle with the ellipse tool. Hold the shift button to create the circle. Leave the colour as default (white fill and black line). The size doesn't matter too much at this stage.

3.  Go to the Effects menu > Distort and Transform > Roughen

4. Using the sliders, make the circle slightly rough. You will need to experiment. There really is not the "right" amount to chose. Smooth points might be best as we are creating flowers. But again you might want to experiment.

3.  Go to the Effects menu > Distort and Transform > Roughen

4. Using the sliders, make the circle slightly rough. You will need to experiment. There really is not the "right" amount to chose. Smooth points might be best as we are creating flowers. But again you might want to experiment.

5. The circle will look something like the one below.

6. Expand the circle. Go to the Object menu > Expand Appearance.  There will be no change in the appearance of the rough circle.

7. Double click on the Scale Tool (in the Tool Panel). It is the middle tool in the picture below.

8. Enter 80 in the Uniform Scale field. Again there is not "right" amount and you should eventually experiment. But this is fine for now. Don'tclick OK.

9. Make sure the Preview is turned on. Press the Copy button. (The other options are fine to leave as they are).

Now you will have two objects on the art board similar to the picture below.

10. Rotate the selected object slightly by clicking on the Selection Tool (black arrow) and rotating a corner handle. OR you could click on the Rotate Tool in the Tool panel and rotate the object.

11. Keep repeating step 7 though 10 so that you have many objects on the art board. It should look something like the picture below.

12. The last two circles in the middle of these objects were made by using the pencil tool. 
That is the basic outline we need.

 Now to put colour on to the flower.

1. Open the Gradient Panel

2. Drag colour from the Colour Panel or Swatches panel to either end of the Gradient Bar (the bar that is going from white to black, shown above).

3. Chose appropriate colours for a flower.

4. Change the Type of gradient from Linear to Radial. See below. 

5. Select all the objects on your art board (the rough circles).

6. Click on the Swatch of the gradient you created (on the Gradient Panel, beneath the word Gradient).

7. You should see something like the picture below. It is a good idea to group the object. Select them all and press Command + G on the keyboard.

8. Turn of the Stroke. Turn it off on the Tool panel or the colour panel or the Swatches panel. Click on the stroke icon and then the red diagonal. There are many places to do the same thing!!

9. The flower should look something like the picture below.

10. Now duplicate the entire flower (select it all with the selection tool, the black arrow; press command + c and then command + v to paste a copy on the art board.

11. Select the copy of the flower. Go to Effect Menu > Distort and Transform > Pucker and Bloat.

12. Turn on preview. Use the slider to change the appearance of the flower.

13. Click OK. Duplicate the flower again. This time use the Zig Zag filter from the Effect > Distort and Transform Menu and see what other effects you can achieve.

14. Produce a page of flowers.